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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, other noble Lords have argued that the case for other subjects is equally strong. The noble Lord may not form that view, but strong views on those subjects are held. We have actively sought to improve PSHE. My noble friend Lady Gould mentioned the healthy school standard, as did my noble friend Lady Massey. Our target is that over half of schools should have achieved the healthy school standard by the end of this year. Some 48 per cent have already achieved it. I believe that we shall exceed the target of over half achieving it by the end of this year. More than 75 per cent of schools are engaged in the programme. To achieve the healthy school standard—in which weare investing more than £12 million this year, up from £5 million in 2003-04—the first criterion is evidence of how the school delivers personal, social and health education, including sex and relationship education and education on drugs, including alcohol, tobacco and volatile substance abuse. The healthy school status guide is made available to all schools. As I say, 48 per cent of schools have achieved the healthy school standard and many others are coming through. All the opening sections of the guide relates to PSHE. It states that a healthy school: "““1. uses the PSHE framework to deliver a planned programme of PSHE, in line with DfES/Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) guidance;""2. monitors and evaluates PSHE provision to ensure the quality of teaching and learning;""3. assesses pupils’ progress and achievement in line with QCA guidance:""4””—" this relates to a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley— "has a named member of staff responsible for PSHE provision with status, training and appropriate senior management support within the school. A Healthy School … involves professionals from appropriate external agencies to create specialist teams to ""support PSHE delivery and to improve skills and knowledge, such as a school nurse, sexual health outreach workers and drug education advisers””." The noble Baroness will know that we have a target of every cluster of schools having a school nurse in place by 2010. A healthy school also, "““ensures provision of appropriate PSHE professional development opportunities for staff … has mechanisms in place to ensure all pupils’ views are reflected in curriculum planning, teaching and learning, and the whole school environment, including those with special educational needs and specific health conditions, as well as disaffected pupils, young carers and teenage parents””." So the child should be at the absolute centre of how a healthy school plans its PSHE activities. We also have training in place for PSHE teachers. The noble Baroness said that we have further to go, and I accept that, but we have 5,000 teachers in place at the moment. We have 2,000 enrolled in the programme, we are continuing to sustain training at that level, and the certificate is at present entirely free. We are building up a larger body of PSHE-trained teachers. We are also establishing, as my noble friend Lady Gould mentioned, a PSHE subject association to provide a network of support for PSHE teachers and to increase their confidence. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, asked about the role of Ofsted. At the moment, it is reviewing the delivery of PSHE in schools. It will be issuing a report on PSHE by the end of the year, and we will look carefully at its findings. I would not wish to rule out further statutory underpinning for PSHE in the future; it needs to be kept under review. It is a vital area of education in schools, and in due course it may well be appropriate to bring in a statutory framework. However, at this stage the priority is to continue to make real improvements on the ground and to invest in training, support and incentives for PSHE rather than to seek statutory changes that will be seen as nationally prescriptive and run against our desire to have fewer, not more, statutory burdens on schools. For those reasons, while we wish to see much stronger support for PSHE in schools, the Government do not support the amendment.